Under the Knife in España

 It will come as no surprise to those who know me, or those who have read previous posts, that my Spanish is limited. Despite having lived here for a year now and despite being an English teacher - languages are not my forte. 

However, that has not stopped me attempting to integrate - usually accompanied by someone who can speak the lingo, but not always. 

MONDAY

I recently had one of those rare, independent moments just a few days after my boss walked into the office at work and told me I had to go to the doctor. I was slightly put out because I was having a good-hair-day and thought I looked alright, so this wasn't top of my list of things to hear that day. Once she explained that the doctor phoned with my "mole appointment" which was scheduled for Wednesday, I soon went back to feeling quite good about my hair. 

Rewind about four months, to two previous doctors appointments to get a mole on my leg looked at after it had gone from an ugly black blob on my thigh, to quite a pretty flower-looking bump. I was told it was absolutely fine but, because I'm a "pale, blue-eyed English girl," the doctors decided it was better to have it off. I'd have felt pleased that they cared, but I was too busy being annoyed they'd called me pale. 

So, the appointment finally came through (apparently for the second time - I was in England the first time they called) and I was off to have my loyal mole "gouged" - that's the word the second doctor used - out of my leg. 

Now, I've been very fortunate since moving here to have made friends with a handful of caring, helpful people who can all speak Spanish, so I was told that if I needed any help, they could come with me or be able to answer a phone call if necessary. However, the day of the second appointment all those months ago was absolutely boiling and I'd dragged Bianca out of bed to accompany me - during Covid, so we were sweating buckets behind our masks - to see the specialist, only to find out he spoke English. I thought I'd better go this one alone, just in case. 

WEDNESDAY

First class of the day done, I was off to the hospital with one final offer of company from Sam that I declined. "I'm sure I'll manage, thanks."

Silly little girl. 

It went wrong fairly quickly from the moment I walked through the door. The one automatic door into the building had been split into two because of Covid - enter right, exit left - but there was no clue of this until you'd actually entered the building. The reaction from an elderly couple makes me sure that me entering through the wrong side of the door ruined the rest of their day. 

I kept my head down and ignored their deadly gazes as I joined the queue at reception. This part I was feeling confident about - I knew what I had to say and exactly how to pronounce the words so there would be no confusion. The man in front of me finished, I stepped up to the receptionist and held out my medical card:

"Tengo una cita para Kitty." 

Nailed it.

"Que?" 

That was it. That was the response I got from the woman who didn't even bother to look up from her screen. I was utterly perplexed, how could she not understand my near-native sentence? She better make a bit more of an effort because that was all I had. I tried again:

"Tengo una cita-"

"Cita?"

"Si."

"Qué es 'una cita'?" 

"I have no idea, it's your language. An appointment?"

"Ah! Una cita!"

Completely baffled, "Si, una cita!"

"No, no, no. Cita. Th- th"

"Th-ita."

"Si! Th- th-ita."

We stood for a bit too long "th-ing" at each other before she gave me my card back and told me to go to the third floor. Up I went to the familiar floor that I had visited months ago and found myself a seat. This action seemed to catch the interest of a middle-aged man in the seat next to me (quite a distance because of social distancing) who decided to turn in his chair and stare at me. An intense what-are-you-doing-here stare that made me question every decision I'd made that lead me to sit next to that man. 

After a minute of uncomfortably pretending I didn't know he was looking at me, I realised he was staring at my legs - bare on what was quite a chilly day. A quick glance around the room proved that he wasn't the only one looking at them. In a room full of older men and women dressed in hats, scarves and coats, I had strolled in with practically nothing on in comparison - flaunting my youth and radiator-like body temperature for a completely practical reason. I wasn't going to wear jeans when the mole is on my thigh. I thought I'd give the doctor easy access! A comment my boss said probably needed rephrasing when she asked if my legs were cold when I returned to work later that day.

The five minutes that I was waiting (they were very punctual) felt a lot longer than it should have. My favourite moment was when an old woman came in with her daughter, looked at me and said something along the lines of "muy frio" and all I could do was shrug and smile behind my mask. A nurse emerged from the door I'd been told would be where I would go and I thought this was the moment. 

"Kitty Isabella?"

I feel I must just explain that Spanish people don't understand the prospect of middle names. They see it as two first names and don't even bother with the surname - especially if there's only one (they've got two). So, when the very quick thought of 'Oh my, God, another Kitty' flitted into my brain, I thought it was understandable. I was later informed that there will never be another Kitty in Spain and, if there is, the likelihood of us both being in the same place at the same time is laughable. 

I ended up in the operating room shortly after realising I was Kitty Isabella and standing slightly too aggressively to make up for the fact that I didn't know my name. I said a polite "Hola" to the other two women in the room before the nurse who came to get me motioned for me to sit on the bed. I don't visit the doctors often in England - I'm never sure who I need to show my prescription if I'm ever given one - and I definitely didn't know you keep your shoes on when you put them on the bed. The nurse seemed shell shocked when I asked if I should take them off. I motioned to ask which side of the bed she wanted my head and, instead of rationally pointing, she grabbed my head and lowered it down for me. 

This bizarre action was followed by a barrage of quick-fire questions that I just answer "Si" to until the nurse, doctor and other woman - no idea why she was there - stopped and stared at me. It was at this moment that I spoke a phrase I know I've perfected apologising for my lack of Spanish.

"Ah, vale. Hablas inglés?"

"Si!" I was a little bit to excited to tell her that. 

"Okay, I asked if you're allergic to any drugs?"

"Oh, God, no! Well, I don't think. I suppose we'll find out."

The doctor laughed at that so I immediately felt a bit too confident with the situation. The rest of the process was fairly straight forward: my leg went numb, she grabbed her scalpel and I watched as she got to work while the nurse stood by with a container at the ready. I still have no idea what the other woman was there for. It was only when the pair started to laugh that I looked at them for a bit of clarification. 

"It's, uh... how do you say?" She looked around the room before pointing a bloody finger at a nearly empty glass of water. "Not this."

"Not shallow?"

"Si! Not shallow."

"It's deep!"

"Si, si! Very deep!"

At that moment, I actually had a proper look at what she was doing and the sawing action that was going on was slightly off-putting. She let out a little cheer when it finally did come out, before chucking it rather unceremoniously into the nurses pot. Twenty-one years I'd had that mole and she just threw it away. Disrespectful. 

It was the nurses job to cover my stitches with a plaster - a job I thought wouldn't take very long, but every time I went to get up, she would hold me down and shout "Espere!" at me. 

"I'll just stay still." A plan that worked well until she didn't tell me she was finished and I was lying there like a lemon for longer than I should have been. The doctor realised that any attempt to explain what I needed to do was futile, so she wrote it all down on a sheet of paper for me to get translated in my own time. I didn't blame her.

All in all, my first (and hopefully last) solo trip to a Spanish doctor wasn't an utter disaster... until I walked the wrong way out of the door and annoyed a different older couple.